Current e-commerce payment practices typically require cardholders to provide a significant amount of personal and financial information to merchants. In an e-commerce or m-commerce environment, providing traditional payment detail to the merchant (e.g., card number, expiration date, billing address etc.) is often viewed as onerous and intrusive, and can very well deter potential consumers from participating in an online transaction. For merchants, the resistance in participation represents unrealized opportunities in direct sales of goods and/or services and lost opportunities for the introduction of new channels of commerce and retailing strategies.
Embodiments of the invention address these problems and other problems individually and collectively.